11 February, 2026 | Konstakademien, Stockholm
This series of talks takes its guiding metaphor from The Looking Glass in Lewis Carroll’s novel of the same name: a portal between two worlds, each appearing slightly estranged or surreal from the vantage point of the other. In this programme, the two “worlds” are those of higher art education and contemporary artistic practice, each shaped by its own institutional histories, epistemologies, and modes of cultural production.
In The Looking-Glass Dialogues, two practitioners meet through this metaphorical mirror to examine the problems, frictions, and potentials they encounter within artistic research.
More.
Facilitated by: Natasha Marie Llorens, Sam Hultin and Magnus Bärtås
The Looking-Glass Dialogues: Sam Hultin and Magnus Bärtås on Archives and Microhistory
Writing Research | Research Writing
25 February-30 June, 2026 | Online
In this course the student will engage with various modes of writing pertaining to artistic research and its connected fields. The course consists of text seminars; lectures; collaborative and individual writing exercises; and two workshops (on artistic research publishing and on publication production processes). Thematically it is oriented around questions of method, process, ethics and aesthetics, specifically considering aspects of authorship and relations between languages, texts and meaning–matter. There will be a focus on the role and possibilities of writing in relation to the student’s own research project and the different artistic field(s) and disciplines of the particpants.
More.
Facilitated by: Khashayar Naderehvandi, Mick Wilson and Kerry Guinan
The Politics and Aesthetics of Hyper-Scales
January 2026-January 2027 | Online
Dr. Kerry Guinan invites researchers, practitioners, and students to participate in a recurring online research seminar, ‘The Politics and Aesthetics of Hyper-Scales’, to support and expand upon her postdoctoral project within CAPim. The project explores how perceptions of scale structure and limit political imaginaries, aiming to develop artistic methodologies that can potentially reorganise spatio-temporal experience, and analysing how such strategies may affect ethico-political sensibilities of responsibility, causality, and agency
Building upon this investigation, this seminar series will examine a vast range of topics that challenge anthro-phenomenal projections of space and time, expanding critical thought to the reach of cosmic and planetary politics and probing the potential political implications of, for instance, microbial ecologies and subatomic processes. It will address the politics of timescales ranging from the digitally instant to the geologically incremental, while questioning the very structuring of time and space by capitalist and colonial regimes.
More.
Facilitated by: Kerry Guinan
Studio Practice: On Affordances
27-29 April, 2026 | Stockholm
Emerging from the ongoing collaboration between Stefano Harney, Professor of Transversal Aesthetics at KHM Cologne, and Dr. Valentina Desideri, a Researcher at CAPIm, this course considers the relation between affordances and study, as well as their relationship to study and the organization of the senses.
For Desideri and Harney, the basic premise is that study is a way to attune to affordances, and affordances are a way to think about our being outside of ‘inter-personal relations’. Rather than naming a relation between two bodies, affordances constitute the very shifting surfaces of what might be called “body” and thus allow us to think without relations. Immersed in a field of offerings (existing, possible, and virtual ones), we may think about study as a practice of tuning in with affordances, of sensing the yet unattended offerings that may host ways of existing that would not be thinkable or possible otherwise.
More.
Facilitated by: Stefano Harney and Valentina Desideri
The Figure of the Archive: Research Seminar
2 March, 2026 | Online
This is the second seminar with a focus on the archival as a research construct in current artistic research and related areas. The goal of the series is to consider the figure of the archive as it functions in a range of current artistic research projects and the different political readings of this figure within these research undertakings.
The archive has been a central figure and pre-occupation over several decades for both the organizational infrastructure and the practical production of contemporary art. Indeed, it might be argued that the archive has become the enabling and the limiting horizon of many cultural practices. It often seems that all forms of collection, all forms of memory work, and all forms of programme are only conceivable through some appeal to the figure of the archive.
More.
Facilitated by: Mick Wilson
Save the Date: Annual Symposium
CAPIm’s second symposium is scheduled to be held in Stockholm from 25 to 27 September 2026. Additional information will be announced in due course.
The first Annual Symposium of CAPIm took place on 28-29 August 2025 with a diverse range of contributions. This included Maria Galindo’s celebratory and performative keynote and her final sharp provocation from the floor, with regard to colonial dispossession: “You cannot give back the land so you can at least give up your ’concepts’!” Throughout the two days there was a lively exchange of projects, perspectives and questions that interrogated constructions of the political, the imaginary, and the meaning of different organizational strategies and ‘prefiguration’. Jonas Staal and Liv Bugge, the two senior guest researchers joining CAPIm, introduced their current research agendas to be developed over the next few months at CAPIm.
Keynotes: María Galindo and Stefan Jonsson.
Learn more about the symposium in 2025 here.
The symposium marked the release of CAPIm’s inaugural Annual Report (2024).
Introduction to Contemporary Arts and Politics, Summer 2026
9 June - 28 August | Online
This summer course has been conceived as an introductory course that addresses how contemporary arts (includes visual arts photography, film, and literature) interact or otherwise connect with the question of political imaginaries.
The student is introduced to key themes through the study of concrete examples. The course adopts an inquiry-based approach. By considering a range of situations where questions of art and questions of politics intersect, we seek to gradually build a wider model or structural account of relations between these. The course is therefore not premised on a pre-resolved theory of “art and politics”. Instead, it provides a survey of instances where themes and questions of politics and the political, and of art and the aesthetic, intersect. Among the concepts tested in this inquiry-based approach is that of the political imaginary. However, as an associated initiative of CAPIm the course is driven by an open research agenda, rather than a resolved theoretical position.
More.
Facilitated by: Seda Yildiz, Kerry Guinan, Michele Masucci and Prof. Mick Wilson
CAPIm Summer School
CAPIm Summer School 2026 – Studies for a Potential History
June 28–July 6, 2026 | Marseille, France
The 2026 edition of the CAPIm Summer School gathers artists, curators, architects, and artistic researchers in Marseille to explore the political imaginary through Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s notion of potential history. Using SHED’s publishing catalogue as a point of departure, the program invites participants to collectively unlearn imperialism and consider how artistic research can repair and reimagine shared worlds.
Over nine days, the Summer School hosts workshops with invited artists and theorists—including Azoulay—alongside participant presentations, close readings, collective meals, and a public evening program curated by Arthur Eskenazi. Rooted in Marseille’s complex histories of migration, extraction, and empire, the gathering unfolds in close collaboration with local cultural structures such as Artagon Marseille and SHED Publishing.
Free and held in English, the program covers travel, accommodation, mid-day meals, and materials. Fourteen participants will be selected through an application process open until January 10, 2026. Apply here.
Open call to CPR 2026: (Self)Organization in North Africa Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco Application deadline: January 20, 2026
The Curatorial Program for Research (CPR) is pleased to announce its open call for curators to participate in CPR 2026: (Self)Organization in North Africa. Participating curators will travel to the North African region, including Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. CPR’s 10th fully-funded research program will take place from May 3–26, 2026.
More.
This is an associated initiative of CAPIm.
Welcome to CAPIm
The Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary is committed to interdisciplinary practice and research in the meeting between contemporary art and the future of politics. Based at two institutions of higher education in art: HDK-Valand and Kungl. Konsthögskolan, the Centre’s aim is to facilitate connections between research and education through an engagement with experimental approaches. It is the first Swedish Centre of Excellence in the field of Artistic Research.
The activities of the Centre are organised around four conceptual strands guiding the construction of innovative educational and research frameworks. Climate Imaginaries engage with radical ecological change and environmental futures. Historical Imaginaries addresses decolonial approaches to collective memory and nationalist representations, as well as non-aligned movements and intensifying globalisation. Democratic Imaginaries takes its point of departure from the polarisation of the public sphere and emerging forms of illiberalism. Technological Imaginaries is focused on the interactions between art and technological developments and their resulting projections of possible futures.
The Pedagogical Programme
CAPIm’s activities are designed to nourish the curriculum of the PhD program at HDK-Valand and in the MA program at KKH. CAPIm also provides national and international access to educational opportunities informed by the latest developments in artistic research and the study of political imaginaries. Some courses are designed specifically by CAPIm faculty and guest researchers, while others are affiliated based on thematic overlap.
Artistic Research
CAPIm functions as an infrastructure to support new research initiatives and aggregate existing research in the field. Associated research consists of both projects led and executed by CAPIm staff and collaborations with those external to its core faculty.
CAPIm Advisory Board
The advisory board meets four times annually to provide external perspective on the Centre’s thematic investments, strengthen its collaborations both nationally and internationally, and contribute with their own research through participation in CAPIm’s annual conference.
Register for Upcoming Events
Visit our events page to learn more, stay updated, and register for our upcoming events.
Welcome to CAPIm
The Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary is committed to interdisciplinary practice and research in the meeting between contemporary art and the future of politics. Based at two institutions of higher education in art: HDK-Valand and Kungl. Konsthögskolan, the Centre’s aim is to facilitate connections between research and education through an engagement with experimental approaches. It is the first Swedish Centre of Excellence in the field of Artistic Research.
The activities of the Centre are organised around four conceptual strands guiding the construction of innovative educational and research frameworks. Climate Imaginaries engage with radical ecological change and environmental futures. Historical Imaginaries addresses decolonial approaches to collective memory and nationalist representations, as well as non-aligned movements and intensifying globalisation. Democratic Imaginaries takes its point of departure from the polarisation of the public sphere and emerging forms of illiberalism. Technological Imaginaries is focused on the interactions between art and technological developments and their resulting projections of possible futures.
The Pedagogical Programme
CAPIm’s activities are designed to nourish the curriculum of the PhD program at HDK-Valand and in the MA program at KKH. CAPIm also provides national and international access to educational opportunities informed by the latest developments in artistic research and the study of political imaginaries. Some courses are designed specifically by CAPIm faculty and guest researchers, while others are affiliated based on thematic overlap.
Artistic Research
CAPIm functions as an infrastructure to support new research initiatives and aggregate existing research in the field. Associated research consists of both projects led and executed by CAPIm staff and collaborations with those external to its core faculty.
CAPIm Advisory Board
The advisory board meets four times annually to provide external perspective on the Centre’s thematic investments, strengthen its collaborations both nationally and internationally, and contribute with their own research through participation in CAPIm’s annual conference.
Register for Upcoming Events
Visit our events page to learn more, stay updated, and register for our upcoming events.
The Looking-Glass Dialogues: Sam Hultin and Magnus Bärtås on Archives and Microhistory
11 February, 2026 | Konstakademien, Stockholm
This series of talks takes its guiding metaphor from The Looking Glass in Lewis Carroll’s novel of the same name: a portal between two worlds, each appearing slightly estranged or surreal from the vantage point of the other. In this programme, the two “worlds” are those of higher art education and contemporary artistic practice, each shaped by its own institutional histories, epistemologies, and modes of cultural production.
In The Looking-Glass Dialogues, two practitioners meet through this metaphorical mirror to examine the problems, frictions, and potentials they encounter within artistic research.
More.
Facilitated by: Natasha Marie Llorens, Sam Hultin and Magnus Bärtås
Writing Research | Research Writing
25 February-30 June, 2026 | Online
In this course the student will engage with various modes of writing pertaining to artistic research and its connected fields. The course consists of text seminars; lectures; collaborative and individual writing exercises; and two workshops (on artistic research publishing and on publication production processes). Thematically it is oriented around questions of method, process, ethics and aesthetics, specifically considering aspects of authorship and relations between languages, texts and meaning–matter. There will be a focus on the role and possibilities of writing in relation to the student’s own research project and the different artistic field(s) and disciplines of the particpants.
More.
Facilitated by: Khashayar Naderehvandi, Mick Wilson and Kerry Guinan
The Politics and Aesthetics of Hyper-Scales
January 2026-January 2027 | Online
Dr. Kerry Guinan invites researchers, practitioners, and students to participate in a recurring online research seminar, ‘The Politics and Aesthetics of Hyper-Scales’, to support and expand upon her postdoctoral project within CAPim. The project explores how perceptions of scale structure and limit political imaginaries, aiming to develop artistic methodologies that can potentially reorganise spatio-temporal experience, and analysing how such strategies may affect ethico-political sensibilities of responsibility, causality, and agency
Building upon this investigation, this seminar series will examine a vast range of topics that challenge anthro-phenomenal projections of space and time, expanding critical thought to the reach of cosmic and planetary politics and probing the potential political implications of, for instance, microbial ecologies and subatomic processes. It will address the politics of timescales ranging from the digitally instant to the geologically incremental, while questioning the very structuring of time and space by capitalist and colonial regimes.
More.
Facilitated by: Kerry Guinan
Studio Practice: On Affordances
27-29 April, 2026 | Stockholm
Emerging from the ongoing collaboration between Stefano Harney, Professor of Transversal Aesthetics at KHM Cologne, and Dr. Valentina Desideri, a Researcher at CAPIm, this course considers the relation between affordances and study, as well as their relationship to study and the organization of the senses.
For Desideri and Harney, the basic premise is that study is a way to attune to affordances, and affordances are a way to think about our being outside of ‘inter-personal relations’. Rather than naming a relation between two bodies, affordances constitute the very shifting surfaces of what might be called “body” and thus allow us to think without relations. Immersed in a field of offerings (existing, possible, and virtual ones), we may think about study as a practice of tuning in with affordances, of sensing the yet unattended offerings that may host ways of existing that would not be thinkable or possible otherwise.
More.
Facilitated by: Stefano Harney and Valentina Desideri
The Figure of the Archive: Research Seminar
2 March, 2026 | Online
This is the second seminar with a focus on the archival as a research construct in current artistic research and related areas. The goal of the series is to consider the figure of the archive as it functions in a range of current artistic research projects and the different political readings of this figure within these research undertakings.
The archive has been a central figure and pre-occupation over several decades for both the organizational infrastructure and the practical production of contemporary art. Indeed, it might be argued that the archive has become the enabling and the limiting horizon of many cultural practices. It often seems that all forms of collection, all forms of memory work, and all forms of programme are only conceivable through some appeal to the figure of the archive.
More.
Facilitated by: Mick Wilson
Save the Date: Annual Symposium
CAPIm’s second symposium is scheduled to be held in Stockholm from 25 to 27 September 2026. Additional information will be announced in due course.
The first Annual Symposium of CAPIm took place on 28-29 August 2025 with a diverse range of contributions. This included Maria Galindo’s celebratory and performative keynote and her final sharp provocation from the floor, with regard to colonial dispossession: “You cannot give back the land so you can at least give up your ’concepts’!” Throughout the two days there was a lively exchange of projects, perspectives and questions that interrogated constructions of the political, the imaginary, and the meaning of different organizational strategies and ‘prefiguration’. Jonas Staal and Liv Bugge, the two senior guest researchers joining CAPIm, introduced their current research agendas to be developed over the next few months at CAPIm.
Keynotes: María Galindo and Stefan Jonsson.
Learn more about the symposium in 2025 here.
The symposium marked the release of CAPIm’s inaugural Annual Report (2024).
Introduction to Contemporary Arts and Politics, Summer 2026
9 June - 28 August | Online
This summer course has been conceived as an introductory course that addresses how contemporary arts (includes visual arts photography, film, and literature) interact or otherwise connect with the question of political imaginaries.
The student is introduced to key themes through the study of concrete examples. The course adopts an inquiry-based approach. By considering a range of situations where questions of art and questions of politics intersect, we seek to gradually build a wider model or structural account of relations between these. The course is therefore not premised on a pre-resolved theory of “art and politics”. Instead, it provides a survey of instances where themes and questions of politics and the political, and of art and the aesthetic, intersect. Among the concepts tested in this inquiry-based approach is that of the political imaginary. However, as an associated initiative of CAPIm the course is driven by an open research agenda, rather than a resolved theoretical position.
More.
Facilitated by: Seda Yildiz, Kerry Guinan, Michele Masucci and Prof. Mick Wilson
CAPIm Summer School
CAPIm Summer School 2026 – Studies for a Potential History
June 28–July 6, 2026 | Marseille, France
The 2026 edition of the CAPIm Summer School gathers artists, curators, architects, and artistic researchers in Marseille to explore the political imaginary through Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s notion of potential history. Using SHED’s publishing catalogue as a point of departure, the program invites participants to collectively unlearn imperialism and consider how artistic research can repair and reimagine shared worlds.
Over nine days, the Summer School hosts workshops with invited artists and theorists—including Azoulay—alongside participant presentations, close readings, collective meals, and a public evening program curated by Arthur Eskenazi. Rooted in Marseille’s complex histories of migration, extraction, and empire, the gathering unfolds in close collaboration with local cultural structures such as Artagon Marseille and SHED Publishing.
Free and held in English, the program covers travel, accommodation, mid-day meals, and materials. Fourteen participants will be selected through an application process open until January 10, 2026. Apply here.
Open call to CPR 2026: (Self)Organization in North Africa Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco Application deadline: January 20, 2026
The Curatorial Program for Research (CPR) is pleased to announce its open call for curators to participate in CPR 2026: (Self)Organization in North Africa. Participating curators will travel to the North African region, including Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. CPR’s 10th fully-funded research program will take place from May 3–26, 2026.
More.
This is an associated initiative of CAPIm.